Sewing for others: Ribbed Jersey Shirt

My latest sewing project is another make for my mum. I love sewing clothes for her and she (generally!) enjoys having clothes made by me. In the brief spell between lockdowns, we enjoyed a trip to Higgs & Higgs together and each bought some fabric to for me to sew up into a garment. I bought a cream needlecord fabric which I used to make a pair of Lander Pants and my mum bought some grey rib to make a shirt.

I've made quite a few different items of clothing for my mum over the years. I'd say the most successful have been her Linden jumpers of which I've made her four (a navy one, a blue one, an orange one and a grey one) although I think it might be time to make another as she's worn a couple of them pretty much to death. The Frou-Frou blouse that I made a few years ago as well as this checked one more recently have also received a lot of wear.

For this project I was asked to make something a bit different. Mum chose a lovely grey rib fabric from Higgs & Higgs to be made into a shirt. We both really like the idea of making items of clothing out of fabrics that they wouldn't traditionally be made from and I've made both a grey jersey shirt and a white one in the past for myself so I thought it would be a fun project. 

In order to get the proportions right I copied a RTW shirt that my mum already owns. Its most interesting feature is the neckline which curves slowly out to open at the neck. I added a collar to this top but I think that the design would also look nice without a collar too.

The only thing I changed from the design of the shirt that I copied was to have the buttons running all the way down rather than have a button placket which ended about halfway down the front. The RTW top also had a stretchy panel inserted at the side seams that ran along the sleeves which I chose to exclude as I used a rib for the whole thing anyway. Even though it's a copy of a top the two look very differnt due to the different fabric types.

The fit turned out really well, but it wasn't the easiest of projects! When my mum first tried it on the shoulder was really wide making the sleeve stick out strangely. After a lot of pinning and basting we managed to fix the fit. I ended up taking quite a lot out of the shoulder where the sleeve was attached and also some at the armpit. I wonder if using a stretchy fabric was the reason the fit didn't quite work out despite copying a top. I'm glad I was able to fix the problem as I really like the style and fabric. 

 

I can't take any credit when it comes to the fabric choice as it was all my mum's idea, but I love the collar so much! I've used cuffing like this one before on the cuffs of this jumper but hadn't thought of using it on a collar. Because we bought the cuffing and ribbing fabric together the colours match exactly which is really nice. It adds such a lovely detail to what might otherwise be a fairly plain top. 

I wasn't sure about how to go about using the cuffing as a collar as the collar would usually have a lining with the raw edges enclosed. All I did was to curve off the edge with scissors to make it round. It doesn't seem to be fraying, but I am slightly worried that it might fray after being washed.

As with many sewing projects there was a bit of stalling with this one when it came to finding buttons. The first issue was waiting for lockdown to end so that we could go into shops, but once it did we struggled to find the right buttons. The initial plan was to have dark grey buttons to match the dark grey in the collar but those apparently don't exist in the size we needed! In the end my mum bought some pearly grey buttons which I sewed on with dark grey thread. They're intended to just make the top wearable until she finds some dark grey ones, but I wonder if we'll ever change them!